Constructor: Rich Katz
Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging
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THEME:"The Final Frontier"— oh, I just got this. The "Final Frontier" is SPACE. I thought that maybe the way the phrases were reparsed, the idea was that the final (part of the first word) had been made "frontier" (as in, uh, "more fronty," i.e. part of the front of the next word) ... but then I got the revealer, SPACE TRAVEL (65A: Voyage by rocket ... or a feature of the answers to the 12 starred clues?), and ... yeah, the title is definitely a "Star Trek" riff ("Space ... the final frontier ...") and not the thing I said. Anyway, familiar two-word phrases are clued as if the "space" between the two words had "traveled" to somewhere else in the phrase:
Theme answers:
Word of the Day: DUA LIPA (116A) —
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Well, there are certainly a lot of them. This was definitely hit or miss for me, with the hits only kinda hitting and misses really missing. The concept is super-basic, so the resulting wackiness needs to be absolutely loony and super-inventive, or else all you've got is corniness and groaning. Here are the reparsings I really liked: GOO DEARTH, ASP ENTREE, PARKA VENUE. The rest of them, I was various degrees of lukewarm on, and ... well, as I say, there were a lot of them, so that's a lot of lukewarmth. Most of the respaced answers involve drastic repronunciations (e.g. D.E.A. THEATER, DUAL I.P.A.), but there's stuff like STARCH ART and SEAT RIP that don't really do anything along those lines. Not surprisingly, I like those listless ones less. I lost a lot of my good will toward this puzzle with the utterly gratuitous Harry Potter clue on SUPERB OWL (which is a tiresome, tiresome bit of wordplay to begin with, esp. this time of year, did we really need to bring the work of the Word Ambassador of Virulent Transphobia into the mix? I submit we did not). And then the puzzle lost *all* of my good will when it bafflingly went to the Harry Potter well Yet Again (actually, this time it had to go to that well ... Death-Eaters exist only in the HPU, afaik). I know many (most?) solvers aren't as put off by the author of those YA wizarding books as I am, but what I do here is talk about exactly what it was like to solve this, and what it felt like, exactly, when I hit HP ref no. 2 was "**** you" (pretty sure I said this aloud). I'm just tired. I'm tired of bigotry and bad-faith arguments and I'm tired of my friends' kids being the targets of hatred. I'm just tired. So ... yes, my [Extreme vexation] was real. But again, the theme concept itself has some potential, and that potential is occasionally realized. And, as I say, once again, there is a lot of it.
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Last thing: for people who contributed via snail mail to my fundraising earlier this month, the first batch of thank-you cards (pictured above) have gone out this week, so look for those. The cards were a little delayed at the printers, so we were about a week or so behind, but the first week's worth of cards and letters have been replied to, and the rest will be coming shortly. It's been a joy, as usual, to get your cards and letters, which (predictably, sweetly) have been rather cat-heavy this year. Here's a small sample of stuff I've received:
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Relative difficulty: Medium to Medium-Challenging
Theme answers:
- LOO MOVER (24A: *Shipper of British toilets?) (loom over)
- MOANA BOUT (44A: *Big fight for a Disney heroine from Polynesia?) (moan about)
- SEAT RIP (18A: *Embarrassing pants mishap?) (sea trip)
- STARCH ART (7D: *Painting of potatoes, e.g.?) (star chart)
- ASP ENTREE (11D: *Main course featuring Egyptian snake meat?) (why couldn't the asp be the one eating the entree? That's nicer / goofier) (aspen tree)
- GOO DEARTH (88A: *Shortage of slime?) (... is this supposed to be the Pearl S. Buck novel "The Good Earth"?)
- PARKA VENUE (38D: *Iditarod, for one?) (Park Avenue)
- SUPERB OWL (77D: *Terrific messenger at Hogwarts?) (this didn't have to be a Harry Potter clue, it really really didn't ...) (Super Bowl)
- DEA THEATER (43D: *Staging of a narc sting?) (Death-Eater is, sadly, yet another Harry Potter thing, sigh)
- EVENT ALLY (79D: *Friend in a competition?) (even tally)
- DUAL IPA (116A: *Brew that's both bitter and fruity?) (Dua Lipa is a pop singer)
- CAT CHAIR (109A: *Rest spot for a tabby?) (catch air)
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| [Rest spot for a tabby named Alfie?] |
Dua Lipa (/ˈduːə ˈliːpə/ (listen) DOO-ə LEE-pə, Albanian: [ˈdua ˈlipa]; born 22 August 1995) is a British and Albanian singer and songwriter. Possessing a mezzo-soprano vocal range, she is known for her signature disco-pop sound. Lipa has received numerous accolades, including six Brit Awards, three Grammy Awards, two MTV Europe Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award, two Billboard Music Awards, an American Music Award, and two Guinness World Records. "No Lie" and "New Rules", each have over 1 billion views on YouTube, with "New Rules" having reached over 2.8 billion views. [...] In 2019, she won the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, as well as the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording for her Silk City collaboration "Electricity". (wikipedia)
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EVEN TALLY and SEA TRIP don't feel so ... much like things. I mean, I can imagine both, but their standaloneness feels mildly weak, at least. Actually, SEA TRIP, fine, it's a thing. It's just meh. EVEN TALLY, less of a thing. The puzzle was tougher than many Sundays have been of late, for me, and part of that difficulty was definitely related to the theme. Despite understanding the conceit quite well, I still had trouble parsing some of the answers, and in the south, where two themers cross, in a very small and sequestered section that also involves yet another "?" clue and Diane Sawyer's "real first name" (!?!?!), I felt like I was in real trouble for a bit. Didn't help that the near-nonsense EVEN TALLY was in this exact section. Unsure about RAMA (99D: Hindu embodiment of virtue), thought STYLE was SHAVE (119A: Do some barbering on), no idea about MIL til I had a couple crosses (113D: Lotta money), and then COOL MOM!?!? (113A: Parent who's fluent in emojis and modern slang, maybe). She's cool ... Because of ... emojis? And slang? What year is it and who is saying this in anything but the most ironic fashion??? I got through this, but I know who DUA LIPA is. Lord help you if you didn't.
The KARMA joke is awful, why use it? (114A: "Your ___ ran over my dogma" (classic dad joke)—hey, it's your joke, own it, don't blame it on some generic "dad"). MISDO hurts my eyes, as does BIOGAS, as does the awkward olde French crosswordese EN AMI. I think KCUP POD (29A: Modern-day groundskeeper?) and TSA PRE (37A: Fast line at the airport, informally) are supposed to be "cool" because they are "new" but they made me screw up my face in distaste. "New" doesn't necessarily mean appealing. Take RFID TAG (99A: Component of some high-tech dog collars). Please, take it. No way am I getting this if I didn't stumble on RFID just a couple days ago in a different puzzle. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it today, mainly because ... again, just because it hasn't been used before doesn't mean it's good. A jumble of letters in an acronym where most people can't actually tell you what the letters are for? (yes, congrats, you know what the letters are for, pat yourself on the back, but look, RFID is no DEA, it's not IPA, no EPA ... it's not even OAS, which ... why would you aspire to create new fill that is like OAS in any way? No one's ever excited to see OAS) (RFID stands for "radio frequency identification," btw ... see, BTW, *that's* an acronym where people know the parts!). Shoving a bunch of abbrs. into longer phrases does make for somewhat hard-to-parse answers, but it doesn't necessarily make for elegant or entertaining fill. I think my favorite answer was PROMPOSALS (3D: Portmanteau invitations). It's a good portmanteau, and if you have known any teens in recent years, then you know PROMPOSALS are very real. Didn't exist when I was young, but my (now former) high-school-teacher wife has been witness to many of them (to be clear, she's a former high-school teacher, not my former wife; I'd write a more elegant sentence, but what fun would that be?).
If you don't know BTS by now, I don't know what to tell you. You'll be seeing this K-Pop supergroup in puzzles for a long, long time to come so just store the info away now (98A: Seoul singers?). I had "OH, NICE" before "OH, NEAT" (a totally arbitrary phrase that I somehow don't hate) (42D: "Wow, super!"). If you are waiting for me to explain the AEIOU clue (2D: Series of trade discounts?), here goes: AEIOU is a "series" of letters (namely, the vowels) that appear, in order, in the phrase "trade discounts" (you are welcome). The End.
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Well, not the end, one announcement: it's time once again for the very popular Boswords online crossword tournament. Go on, try it. You know you're curious. Here's the deets from tourney organizer John Lieb:
Registration is now open for the Boswords 2023 Winter Wondersolve, an online crossword tournament which will be held on Sunday, February 5 from 1:00 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Solvers can compete individually or in pairs and will complete four puzzles (three themed and one themeless) edited by Brad Wilber. To register, to see the constructors, and for more details, go to www.boswords.org.
If you're good enough to solve a Sunday puzzle, you're good enough to participate in this tournament. Have faith in yourself! Rope your mom / son / daughter / dad / friend into competing with you in the pairs division! You'll have a good time.
Last thing: for people who contributed via snail mail to my fundraising earlier this month, the first batch of thank-you cards (pictured above) have gone out this week, so look for those. The cards were a little delayed at the printers, so we were about a week or so behind, but the first week's worth of cards and letters have been replied to, and the rest will be coming shortly. It's been a joy, as usual, to get your cards and letters, which (predictably, sweetly) have been rather cat-heavy this year. Here's a small sample of stuff I've received:
That last pun is so baldly, blatantly bad that I laughed out loud. That's the way you do it. Anyway, you are all very kind. Note: a few of you have written things like "sorry this is late ..." and I'm here to tell you There Is No Such Thing As Late. Anything you send me, any time you send it, is exactly on time. That is all. Goodbye for real now.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Facebook]